London – For decades they were the bitterest of foes, but on Tuesday firebrand Protestant preacher Ian Paisley and former Irish Republican Army commander Martin McGuinness pledged their cooperation as they were sworn in, respectively, as Northern Ireland’s first minister and deputy first minister.
The occasion marked the return of home rule to Northern Ireland after a five-year suspension, but more significantly, it marked the symbolic end of the vicious sectarian strife that has divided Northern Ireland’s Catholics and Protestants while claiming more than 3,600 lives over three decades.
Now the task ahead is the day- to-day governance of Northern Ireland, and the question is whether Paisley and McGuinness, two men who have spent their careers on the front lines of the province’s great sectarian struggle, can attend to the more mundane matters of fixing its schools, hospitals and potholes.
Already, there have been heartening signs of cooperation. Earlier this week, Paisley and McGuinness demonstrated an ability to work together as they leaned on the British treasury to increase the promised “peace dividend” to rebuild the Northern Ireland economy.
But they did not shake hands at Tuesday’s ceremony, and no one seriously expects these two rivals to set aside their profound differences and suddenly provide Northern Ireland with efficient local government. That can wait until the next election. Their job, at this moment, will be to cement the peace.
The new power-sharing government consists of 12 Cabinet positions based on how many seats each party holds in the Northern Ireland assembly. Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party will have five Cabinet positions, Sinn Fein will get four while the moderate Ulster Unionist Party has two and the mainly Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party gets one.
The arrangement, spelled out in the 1998 Good Friday agreement, is not the standard parliamentary system in which the largest party forms the government and its closest rival sits in opposition. Many analysts see it as a formula for gridlock that could ultimately return power to Northern Ireland’s moderate parties.
In Tuesday’s speeches, Paisley and McGuinness articulated sharply divergent visions of Northern Ireland. Paisley insisted that “Northern Ireland’s union within the United Kingdom is stronger than ever.” McGuinness introduced himself as “a republican who believes in the unity of Ireland.”
